Gated Community: Pros & Cons

Well, it is up and running. They finally activated the gate on Thursday, June 7th and it was doing some funny things. Well just one of them were. I entered the gate at about 6am and the card works great then the first disturbing thing happened, someone piggybacked off of me. Someone sat in their car in the parking lot in front of the main office, waited for someone who had a key and followed them in. Kind of bugged me, but it serves the complex for not having a fool proof system.

The other weird thing that happened was that the main exit door was opening and closing at random. Thankfully that stopped. The next problem with the gate system is the procedure for visitors to enter the gate. There is a punch panel for them, but the instruction for the panel is very small. This sucks for the night because there is no light to read it. It is also bad because if anyone else wants to enter the complex and they have the key, they will have to wait for the poor visitor who has to figure out this system in order to get in.

And the last problem with the system is the speaker on the panel. It is very, very quiet. You can even hear the phone ring let alone the person on the other side. I don't know. There has to be a way to improve on this system so we shall see how this goes.

Pros:

• The exits respond well to the ground sensors.
• The key pads reads the cards well.
• The directory display is well lit.

Cons:

• People can piggyback.
• Instructions on panel is hard/too small to read.
• Speaker is too quiet.

My wife has many more issues with the gates, but I will leave it to her to express them in her own blog if she wishes.

Later....................